


Vita Dum Superest

by within_a_dream



Series: Revelations [3]
Category: Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Case Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 10:57:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7530010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/pseuds/within_a_dream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benjamin January leaves Paris after his wife's death, only to return to a New Orleans in ruins. Looking for a place to recover from his grief, he finds himself instead embroiled in a world of reanimated corpses, politics, and murder.</p>
<p>This fic takes place during the beginning of <i>Free Man of Color</i>, but contains some characters not introduced until <i>Wet Grave</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vita Dum Superest

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a Latin quotation, _Vita dum superest, bene est_ \--where life remains, all is well.
> 
> Violence in the fic is more along the lines of canon-level than, say, _The Walking Dead_ -level, but there is some zombie-centric violence. I've chosen to omit some warnings in the interest in spoilers--feel free to ask for more spoilery content warnings! (I'm withinadream27 on Tumblr, gmail, and LJ, and withinadream on Dreamwidth.)
> 
> I've tagged most of the major players, but pretty much every character in the series (who would be in New Orleans at this point in the timeline) appears.

The city was smoking.

January could see that from the moment it came into view, although he’d tried to convince himself otherwise. The ship drew closer to port, and the truth became harder to deny. Considering what January knew now, it was a miracle they were allowed to dock at all, but at the time he was more than a little perturbed at how unceremoniously he was ushered onshore. The rest of the passengers seemed to have reconsidered their plans, but no matter what had happened since his departure, this was the only place left for him to go.

He hadn’t dragged his bags very far into the city when he began to wish he’d remained onboard as well. The streets were empty, and the air smelled of ash and decay. January would wonder, later, what would have happened had he turned back when he realized just how wrong things had gone. Of course, that assumed he would have been able to leave, to turn his back on his sisters, his mother, his friends, and his city. As it was, it took a long while for January to convince himself that the street was well and truly empty, and that he would do better to return to the docks.

Too long, it seemed, for the ship was well past shouting distance when he reached the water. He stood at the edge of the pier, watching it disappear into the distance and wondering what in the world he should do.

“Watch out!”

When January turned to look for the source of the shout, he saw a man walking towards him. Although, upon further consideration, ‘shambling’ might have been a better term. He immediately placed the shambling man as a threat, although he would have been hard-pressed to pinpoint why. Perhaps it was the way his clothes hung off his frame, once fine but now ragged and torn. Or it could have been the look of his face, drooping and gray. In any case, when he caught sight of the second man running towards him, yelling at him to jump, it didn’t take long for January to follow him into the water.

He sputtered to the surface just in time to see a boy onshore swing a sword at the man who’d started this all, barely flinching at the blood that spattered his face. It was a blow that should have felled anyone, but the man only staggered back a bit before continuing his advance. He grabbed for the boy, who knocked him down with a well-placed kick to the knee and proceeded to hack his head off.

January hauled himself back onto the dock, extending a hand to the other man, who appeared to be having more trouble. As soon as he was back on dry land, he dissolved into a wretched-sounding coughing fit, but he waved off January’s attempts to assist him. It was then that the absurdity of the situation hit him—knocked into the bay by a white man who normally wouldn’t have given the time of day, to avoid the advance of some strange being (something about his attacker, although January couldn’t say what, didn’t seem quite human).

After the coughing ceased, the man wiped his mouth with a sopping-wet handkerchief. “Hannibal Sefton, at your service.” He bowed in January’s direction. “I apologize for not introducing myself earlier, but we were both rather occupied.” With a glance in the boy’s direction, he added, “And it is my deepest pleasure to introduce you to the lovely Rose Vitrac.”

The name startled January, although looking at her again, he couldn’t guess how he’d mistaken her for a boy, even given the trousers. “Benjamin January. Can either of you tell me what the hell is going on?”

Instead of answering his question, the woman looked him over. “What brings you to New Orleans?”

“It’s my home.” The words rang false (January had never felt at ease here), but with Ayasha gone, the city was the only place with a claim to him. “I’ve been in Paris these past years, first to study medicine, then to work.”

“You picked quite the time to return,” Sefton said. “A week or so later, and your ship might not have been allowed to dock at all.”

“You said you were a doctor?” Rose removed a pair of bent spectacles from her face and wiped them on the hem of her shirt. “I know someone who needs your help. I can explain everything on the way.”

January really should have been more apprehensive about following two strangers, one of whom he’d just seen kill a man, into a ruined city. Instead, he picked up his bags and followed them.

It was clear, walking past the body, that something was deeply wrong. The man had the look of someone who’d been dead for days, skin gray and face swelled with decay. Both his companions noted his confusion.

“I suppose now would be a good time for the explanation I promised,” Rose said.

“We’ve had an uprising, I suppose you could say. _The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets_ …Though they seem to be doing more biting than gibbering.”

January looked back at the corpse. “You mean to tell me—”

“For months now, we’ve been plagued by the restless dead.” As they walked, Rose began to wipe the blade of her sword. “They never weaken, never tire, and seem to have a craving for human flesh. We’ve adapted, but as you’ve seen, life here is dangerous now.”

It had always been dangerous, although January had to admit that ravenous corpses roaming the streets were on a different level than riverboat men with quick tempers and quicker fists. “Why stay?”

Rose frowned. “People were afraid to acknowledge things had changed, at first. And now—”

“They’ve walled us in. There are soldiers at every exit, waiting to shoot anyone who strays too close to the outside world. _Stone walls do not a prison make_ , but the men with guns certainly make a man feel trapped.”

What had he come back to? With that, a horrible thought struck January. “Did anyone manage to leave?”

Rose hesitated before she answered. “There were a few. There’s still talk of people sneaking past the barricade, although of course, it’s difficult to know if they were successful. Do you have family here?”

“My mother, and sisters.”

“We can ask after them.” She didn’t sound hopeful. Lord, Dominique had been a little girl when he left; he’d hardly know where to start looking for her. To return to New Orleans only to find he’d lost every remaining member of his family…well, it was better not to ask for trouble, for he was certain trouble would find him soon enough. Rose seemed to see his worry. “It might take some time, but there are groups of people all through the city.”

They were silent, after that. It made January feel uneasy to talk, his voice seeming too loud in the deserted streets, and it seemed the others felt the same. There was nothing about the city that didn’t make him uneasy, truthfully. Everything was alien—the smell of ash and rot hanging in the air, the stifled silence through which their footsteps echoed like thunder, the eerie emptiness of the streets. _At least_ , he’d thought when he boarded the ship in Paris, _at least I’ll be returning to someplace familiar._ It seemed a theft of the worst sort to come home to this, whatever _this_ was.

After weaving through a maze of side streets and dark corners, they came to a stop in front of a boarded-up building that looked much like all the others they’d passed. A knock on the wall brought about a chorus of scraping and scurrying inside, and soon enough the door (which January wouldn’t even have been able to identify as a door had it remained shut) scraped open. The girl on the other side froze when she saw January.

“It’s all right,” Rose said. “This is Mr. January, and he’s here to help Cora.”

The girl looked marginally less terrified after the introduction, although she still didn’t speak. She lingered by the door as the three of them entered, beginning the long and arduous task of bolting it again. Rose gave a small smile and said, “We can’t be too careful, especially after dark.”

January nodded. “Of course.” He scanned the room, searching for any sign of his would-be patient. He was just beginning to worry that there wasn’t an injured party at all, that he might have been lured into some sort of trap, when a voice from a dark corner called out, “You bring home another stray, Rose?”

“I’ve found a doctor.”

“A surgeon,” January said quietly. “Who am I meant to be treating?” As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out a woman lying on the floor, leg at an odd angle.

“This is Cora.” Rose gestured towards the woman. “We were searching for supplies a day or so ago, and she fell through the floor of a building.”

“Let me take a look.” January knelt down. The woman was smaller than he’d expected, face tight with pain. “This might hurt a bit.”

 “I can handle it.” She spoke the sloppy French of the cane fields, words slurred even more by the pain.

“It seems to me your leg is broken. I need to find the break before I can set it.” She sucked in a breath as he took her injured leg in hand, but otherwise remained remarkably silent.

January set the bone and bound the leg up in a makeshift splint. As he tied off the bandage, Cora gave a barely-audible sigh and propped herself up on her elbows, craning her neck for a better view of the injury.

“You’ll want to stay off it for a few weeks at least,” he warned her.

Cora groaned. “I don’t know if I can survive another day cooped up here with your girls, Rose.”

“I could leave you outside to fend for yourself if you’d rather,” Rose said sweetly, drawing a throaty laugh.

“Your girls?” The child who’d answered the door hadn’t borne any resemblance to Rose, although that didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t related.

Rose smiled, sensing the meaning behind his question. “I was a schoolteacher, before all hell broke loose. By the time we realized what was happening, the parents were--well, it was too late to reunite the girls with their mothers. So we’ve set up camp here. I try to keep up with the lessons, but it’s difficult.”

_A schoolteacher_. January pictured the woman he’d seen not an hour ago bury her sword in a man’s throat standing in front of a classroom and had to hold back a chuckle, although seeing her here, relaxed and laughing, it wasn’t as difficult as it would have been earlier. Off the streets and in the safety of the building, she moved gawkily, and January half-expected her to entangle herself in her long legs with each step. She reached up to fidget with her spectacles every so often, fingers toying with the bent rim.

“And what were they learning, in the time before?”

“Mathematics. Chemistry. Greek. Latin. The sorts of subjects that parents of young girls are loath to encourage a passion in. I’ve scrounged together some books, and we work when we can.”

There was something strange in hearing about these people’s lives, as if he were intruding on a place he didn’t belong. Still, January couldn’t shake the feeling that he could have belonged here, had things been different--though what gave him that impression he couldn’t say. He was more than likely growing overly sentimental after so long away from home (and it still felt wrong, calling this city his home, but the jagged edges of the word were beginning to wear away). “I assume it was one of your pupils who met us at the door, then.”

“Marie-Neige. She’s a bit shy, but a good girl. You’ll likely meet Genevieve and Isabel tomorrow. You’ll stay the night, of course,” she added, seeing him begin to protest. “The dead grow more active at night; it’s far better to remain inside until dawn. And you’re welcome to stay for as long as it takes to find your family, as well.”

“I would hate to be a burden.”

“You’d be far from it. There are precious few surgeons still in the city.”

“Besides, Rose has no objections to taking in those who are far more burden than help. You’d be nowhere near the most useless one here.” Hannibal had been silent for so long that January had assumed he’d fallen asleep. “Before the dead rose, I was a shiftless ne-erdowell whose only skill was with the fiddle, and she hasn’t kicked me out yet. A practicing surgeon from Paris is most definitely a step up.”

“I’ve made my living these past years as a pianist, actually.” January smiled ruefully. “Even in France, it’s difficult for a man such as me to find work in medicine.”

“A pianist! Perhaps I could entice you into playing with me? The previous occupants of our house were foolish enough to leave their piano behind when they fled the undead hordes, and I’ve kept it in tune.” He waved to a corner of the dim room, in which January, when he squinted, could make out a piano tucked against the wall.

It had been far too long since he’d last played, and January could feel his fingers itching to brush the keys once again. “I would love to.”

A bustle of activity later, and January was seated at the piano, hands poised over the keyboard as Hannibal tuned his violin. With a nod from the fiddler, January began to play. Hannibal leapt in in the blink of an eye, weaving light trills around his chords. Sinking into the music was effortless, and soon January was focused entirely on the thread of the melody that the two of them passed between them. When the song they’d spun drew to a close, the room fell into a too-deep silence, broken what seemed an age later when Rose said, “Would you mind helping Cora up to my room?”

He’d wondered at her makeshift bed of rags in the corner, and should have realized that none of this house’s residents would have been able to lift her up the stairs. January took her in his arms as gently as possible, but although he couldn’t avoid the injured leg entirely, she never once cried out in pain. Cora murmured a “Thank you” when he laid her down on Rose’s bed.

After her assurance that they had spare rooms in abundance, and he wasn’t needed for anything else that night, January allowed Rose to show him to his own bedroom. As soon as he laid down, his weariness faded, replaced by a buzzing worry for his family and an all-too-sharp awareness of every sound outside. When he finally drifted off, his dreams were filled with impressions of his family shambling through the streets, rotting away as he watched.

 

A friend would be visiting that afternoon, January was told when he awoke the next morning, one who might have news of his family.

“We don’t stray too far from our house,” Rose said, “but Monsieur Mayerling travels most of the city. He’s been kind enough to help us with supplies while Cora is recovering.”

Augustus Mayerling, when he arrived, was much closer to the sort of person January would have pictured thriving in the city as things now stood than the motley crew who’d happened across him. He was small but strong, face crossed with scars and a sword hanging at the side of his worn but well-made suit. The woman who ducked inside after him was more of a surprise, although she recognized January before he recognized her.

“Monsieur Janvier?” As a smile flashed across her face, drawing up the corners of her deep brown eyes, he remembered a young girl seated at a piano, long ago, before he’d left home. “It’s Madeleine...I would have been Madeleine Dubonnet, when you last saw me. You do remember me?”

“How could I forget?” January turned to the others. “Mademoiselle Madeleine was a star pupil of mine, before I left for Paris. Although I suppose that’s no longer your name.”

“Madame Mayerling now; or I would be, had the end of the world not arrived at such an inopportune time. What brings you back?”

“A poorly-planned reunion with my family. I was hoping you could help me. Have either of you heard word of Livia Janvier?”

Mayerling snorted in laughter. “I apologize. I didn’t mean...there are few people in this city who aren’t familiar with Livia Janvier.”

“She’s well, then?”

“More than well. She’s the Queen of Rue Burgundy--the street belongs to her, and she’s kept the dead away since the beginning.”

“Thank God,” January murmured. Although given his current knowledge, it seemed incredibly foolish that he’d ever doubted his mother’s ability to thrive in spite of whatever the world threw at her. She would of course keep on even in the face of a plague such as this, no doubt still making time to gossip about how Madame Such-and-such had gone to seed since her protector was eaten.

“Rue Burgundy is close by,” Rose said. “I could take you to look for her tomorrow, if you’d like.”

They talked for an hour or so, the late afternoon light managing to penetrate the dusky parlor enough to make it feel more of a home than a tomb. Between the light and the news of his mother, January almost felt at ease. It didn't occur to January until after the Mayerlings left how free he'd been in his speech. Before, he would never have dared speak to a white woman so liberally. Had his time in Paris made him incautious? Or was it the cause of this strange new world, where the primacy of survival seemed to have overcome all other divides?

In any case, this night passed easier than the last, and January felt less like the city was smothering him. He talked the others into allowing him to stand watch for at least part of the night, and retired with the understanding that Rose would wake him when his time came.

 

Instead, he awoke to a loud pounding that he realized must be someone rapping at the door. January hastened to the entryway to see Hannibal fumbling with the latches as a voice from outside shouted, “For God’s sake, let me in!”

When he finally succeeded in dragging the door open, a man came tumbling in, muttering something breathless that might have been, “Thank you!” The commotion had roused Cora from where she slept near the entryway, and drawn Rose and the girls down from their rooms. Hannibal ushered him inside and began to lock up again, and January stepped forward to greet their midnight visitor.

In the New Orleans January had left, a white man would never have smiled so gratefully at him, or followed his direction as easily as this one did. He took a shaky seat in the parlor. “A thousand thanks. You’ve saved my life.” But the worry on his face didn’t fade. On the contrary, it seemed to grow as he looked around at the small crowd that had gathered around him.

“You’re welcome to stay the night,” Rose said, although the way she pursed her lips suggested that she was less than happy about this turn of events. “I can show you to a guest room.”

“I’d be much obliged.” As she led the man up the stairs, Rose motioned for January to follow.

“I’m afraid I don’t have a bed for you, but you’re welcome to the library.” Once she’d led him inside and shut the door, she drew January closer and said, “I hate to keep you up, but would you mind keeping an eye on our guest? There aren’t many good reasons to be out past dark.”

“Of course.” January took a seat against the door, and settled in for a long night.

 

He was struggling to stay awake when something clattered inside the library. January hurried to his feet, but by the time he’d entered the man had already climbed out the window. January rushed to the window, watching him clamber down the side of the building.

“Hey!” He wasn’t sure what he should do, aside from locking up after the man’s escape. None of them wanted him to come back, and it was light enough outside that he’d most likely be safe. January’s shout drew no acknowledgement from the man, nor did his slamming the window shut. His only reaction came when his arm caught on a loose board as he leapt to the ground, drawing a shout that was audible even through the glass. The man clamped a hand to his arm as he ran off, and soon enough he’d ducked into an alleyway and disappeared from January’s view entirely.

He heard Rose long before she stepped into the library. “Isabel, go back to bed. It’s barely dawn.” The girl must have replied, for Rose paused a moment and answered, “I’ll tell you what happened in the morning, I promise.” A small set of footsteps pattered away from the door, and Rose poked her head in. “I hope you can tell me what _did_ happen.”

“Our guest decided to take his leave of us.” January gestured towards the window. “I’ve locked up after him...I’m not sure there’s much else we can do.”

“There was nothing worth stealing in the room, at least.” Rose looked around. “I keep the schoolbooks here, but not many people have use for those, now.”

January pictured Rose making herself comfortable in the library with a book, candlelight glinting off of her spectacles and long fingers languidly flipping the pages. He tamped down on the fluttering in his chest that ensued from such thoughts. He was far too old to let puppy love get the best of him, and in the end, this was a woman he’d met two days ago, no matter how long it felt like they’d been working together. “He didn’t seem to be carrying anything.”

“Well, at least we’ll have one less to feed.”

And one less stranger to keep a watch on, January thought, uncomfortably aware of his own position among the group. They’d been nothing but kind to him, but of course they’d be fools to trust him completely. That didn’t take away the sting of their caution, the longing to be back among friends. He prayed he’d find his family unharmed, and that their presence would make this strange city feel a bit more like home.

 

 

Just after breakfast, Rose and January set off to find his mother. Every rustle in the street set him on edge, but Rose seemed unbothered by the constant threat—she held her machete close to hand, but her walk was as relaxed as if she were taking a Sunday stroll. The streets leading up to the Rue Saint-Antoine were mercifully free of the walking dead. In fact, their first encounter with anyone was when they approached the street, and found a woman wielding a sword. She was short and deceptively thin, wearing what had once been a fine silk dress that was now dirtied and cut off above the hem.

“Maman?”

“Benjamin?” Livia Janvier put down the machete she was brandishing and cocked her head at him. “You certainly picked a time to come home.”

“So I’ve been told.” There was something comforting in the fact that even through the apocalypse, his mother’s polite disappointment in him had remained constant. “How are you?”

“Oh, well enough, I suppose. I’ve had to abandon the house, but Giselle Poirier and I have found a lovely mansion just down the street, and there were only a few corpses to clear out.”

“You’re uninjured?” He took her scathing glance as an answer. “And what of Olympe? And Dominique?”

“The last I heard, Minou was down on Rue Dauphin with her protector, Henri Viellard. And as for Olympe, I haven’t the slightest idea.”

He knew from hard-won experience that it would do him no good, but January couldn’t keep from expressing his shock. Sure enough, Livia cut him off before he’d even begun to speak.

“Really, Benjamin, how do you expect a woman to keep track of her fully-grown children, especially with the city as it is now? You know how your sister is.”

“Shall I let you know what I find of them?” He couldn’t keep the tension out of his voice.

“If you wish.” And with that, she took her leave of him.

 

He couldn’t help but laugh at Rose’s concerned expression. “I wasn’t expecting anything more from her. She’d know if my sisters were dead, and now I at least have a starting point.”

“It seems a shame she couldn’t tell you where they were.”

January could hear the meaning behind her words: _it seems a shame she hasn’t even bothered to keep track of her daughters._ “As I said, that’s my mother.” He meant to say more, but just then they ran into a small group of the walking dead, and by the time they reached home, they were filthy and exhausted. (It was worrisome how quickly fighting off hordes of walking corpses had become mundane to him, January thought. Give it a week or two, and he might not even remember a time when one could step outside without running the risk of being eaten.)

They’d barely made it to the parlor when a knock at the door drew Rose from her seat.

“No, you can stay,” she protested when January moved to come with her. “It’s like as not a friend of mine.”

Judging by the bits of the conversation January could hear, the man at the door wasn’t a friend.

“You’d best come inside,” Rose said after a few moments of harsh-sounding questions. “It’s never a good idea to linger too long in the entryway.”

The man who trailed her into the parlor was white, shabby, and wearing a military uniform. He tipped his hat and said, “Abishag Shaw, of the city guard.”

“Benjamin January.” Whatever the authorities wanted with them, it couldn’t be good.

“Ma’amselle Vitrac says you folks had a visitor last night, name of Adrien Belanger?”

“He didn’t give a name.” January tried to temper his tone. “And he didn’t stay very long, I’m afraid.”

He pulled a small portrait from under his jacket. “You recognize him, though?”

The face in the frame was undeniably familiar. “I do, but he left through our window last night, and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Oh, I’m not looking to find him. He’s already turned up, in a warehouse just down the street. I’m looking to find his killer.”

January had the feeling this wouldn’t be good news for them. “He seemed frightened when he arrived last night, but he didn’t tell us anything about who might be threatening him.”

“I’d be inclined to call it bad luck, but his family’s on their way to ransom him out, and they’ll want his killer caught.” Shaw sighed. “You understand, they’ll want someone arrested. I’d rather leave you alone, but if’n we can’t track down the real murderer, you’ll have to stand trial.”

January wasn’t familiar with the current judicial landscape, but in the New Orleans he’d left, it would be very difficult for two people of color to defend themselves against these sorts of accusations.

Rose’s worry confirmed his suspicions. “We’ll do our best.”

“He’s the heir of some northern family, and they wanted him back for his cousin’s funeral. Monsieur and Madame Belanger both died in the onslaught; Adrien disappeared into the city. I’ve been tracking him for days, and if’n he hadn’t got himself killed, I’d be delivering him to his aunt.” He shook his head. “That’s all I know. You find anything, stop by the Levee Street wall—I’m on patrol in the afternoon.”

“Would you mind showing us the body, sir?” January asked, not expecting much from this slow-talking, greasy-haired Kaintuck. “I have medical training, and I may be able to ascertain something from the scene of the crime.”

To his surprise, Shaw nodded. “We have to leave now; the body’ll be burned afore nightfall.”

January and Rose followed him to a nondescript building on the street corner, windows shattered and door ajar just like so many other buildings along the street. By the wall lay the corpse.

“I figure he was beat to death,” Shaw said, gesturing to the face, swollen with bruises. January, however, found his eyes drawn to the chunks of flesh carved from his limbs and chest with something like toothmarks.

Rose, following his gaze, murmured, “The other dead must have found him last night.” Upon further examination, the wounds had the characteristic lack of blood of those caused postmortem—January shuddered at the thought of living here, in this city where bites torn out of the dead were considered unremarkable.

“New to town?” Shaw asked, head cocked at January.

“I had the misfortune to sail in just last night, sir,” he replied, smiling a bit at Shaw’s laugh. “The bites can be disregarded, then.” The bruising around the face did seem consistent with a beating, although the man would have needed to sustain some heavy blows to leave him in this state—the force required would certainly have killed him. There was nothing around him to provide any clue to who would have wished him dead with such violence.

 

They declined Shaw’s offer to see them home, and walked down the street, January’s mind (and Rose’s as well, he guessed) spinning with their task. To track down a killer, in a city he hardly knew…it seemed an insurmountable task.

“He said Adrien was going to be ransomed?” January asked. The least he could do was fill the gaps in his knowledge.

Rose smiled tightly. “If your family has enough money, the military will be happy to release you from the quarantine. Sometimes I wonder if their goal is to keep us worthless people locked up in the city until we consume each other.”

It startled January how little this plague had changed the city, and the cynicism of that startled him even more. He’d been happy, once, he thought. Then he put that thought out of his mind; it would only lead to memories he didn’t have time to indulge in. “It seems we have a murder to solve, then.”

Rose laughed. “We’ll have to tell Hannibal. He’ll be brokenhearted over missing the excitement.”

But when they arrived at the house, Hannibal met them at the door with yet more news. “You have visitors,” he said to January, nodding towards the parlor, where a woman in a torn-off pink dress and trousers stood.

“Benjamin?” When he nodded, the woman embraced him. “Oh, I was just thrilled when Monsieur Mayerling told me you’d returned! Well, not entirely, of course—you would have been much safer in Paris.”

“So I’ve learned.” January grinned. “I’m glad you’re well, Minou.”

“And I’m glad you’ve found your way safely back.”

Once she’d released him, January found his gaze drawn to the group gathered behind her. The tall, fat man in a ragged suit, spectacles perched precariously atop his nose, must be the protector his mother had spoken of.  It was more difficult than he’d thought it would be to see him. January had known, of course, that his sister would become a plaçée, even when she’d been barely knee-high. It was another thing entirely to come face-to-face with this Henri.

But he held out his hand to shake January’s (another shock, that a white man from New Orleans would ever deign to clasp the hand of his mistress’s Congo-black brother), smiling so broadly that January felt his opinion of the man soften. “A pleasure to meet you.”

“And these,” Minou said, gesturing behind her, “are our companions, Artois and Chloë St. Chinian.”

Although the girl was white as porcelain and the boy was a few hues too dark to be a full-blooded sibling, they were clearly related—their piercing blue eyes and the curve of their jawlines testified to that.

“We met them by chance on Rue Bourbon soon after the world ended, as we were searching for supplies, and of course we had to invite them along.” Dominique made it sound as normal as paying a social call. “And they’ve been lovely company—Henri is wonderful, but it does get dull having only one person to talk to, you know.”

“I was studying, in my uncle’s home,” Artois said. January had gathered by now that questions about this now-absent uncle would be unwise. “Chloë had come for a visit, by chance, and then of course she couldn’t get home.”

“It was better that I couldn’t,” the girl said, her voice soft. “We found them a week later.”

What a world, January thought once again, that this schoolgirl could speak so plainly about the death of nearly all of her family.  “I’m sorry.” The words felt hollow, as they had out of the mouths of his friends in Paris, but he hoped the meaning carried through.

He could see in Minou’s eyes that she knew what had happened to him on some level, but she didn’t ask him then, bless her. Instead, she took Chloë’s hand in hers, and said, “It’s been a difficult year. But we’ve found each other, and we’ve made do. As have you, it seems. How on Earth did you find your way here?”

January launched into the tale, grateful for the distraction from his grief. He recounted his arrival: the shock he’d had at the state of the city, and how Rose and Hannibal had saved his life. How they’d found the Mayerlings, and found his mother. “And now, it seems, I’m under suspicion of murder.”

“Oh, Ben!” Minou’s exasperation was eerily reminiscent of their mother. “However did you manage that?”

There was another story to tell, as long as his first. She listened sympathetically, and as soon as he’d finished jumped back into the conversation.

“We’ll help you, of course. Henri or his friends might have known the victim. And you’ll have to talk to Olympe, of course. She knows more of—” Dominique waved her hands, searching for the right word. “The sort of people who might have cause to kill him. You understand me?”

January nodded. “She’s all right, then? Our mother couldn’t tell me where she was.”

“Oh, of course! You know Olympe and Maman never got on, and you know our sister well enough not to be surprised that a mob of living corpses couldn’t keep her from her life.”

He’d had a low opinion of his family, it seemed, to believe that even the apocalypse could stop them.

She embraced him again. “We’ll work things out, just wait. But tonight, you’ll have to talk with me—we have so much to catch up on!”

 

Talk they did, once the rest of her company had been settled around the house. “What brought you back, p’tit?” she asked January, and he told her of his love, the light of his life, and of the cholera that had taken her from him.

“Oh, Ben.” She held him as he cried, and listened to his rambling descriptions of Ayasha, his desperate attempts to convey what he’d lost. The conversation was more comforting than he’d thought it would be.

“I wish you could have met. She would have liked you.” January smiled, feeling lighter than he had in a long while. “Enough about old sorrows. How have you been?”

“That’s not a path that will lead us to happiness, I’m afraid. I’m as well as can be expected, considering the state the city’s in, but of course it’s been difficult.” Dominique’s strained smile belied her light tone. “I was lucky that Henri stood by me. Oh, I know what you think of men who take plaçées, Ben, but he does love me. You have to understand, when the town began to go up in flames, he told his mother—this is the woman who’s had him under his thumb since he was a baby, who he can barely defy in matters of dinner planning—that either he would bring me to the family home, or he would leave. And then, when she told him to leave, he did.”

January couldn’t deny that he _had_ been uncertain of Henri Viellard, but it seemed the man had done enough to earn his trust. “You’ve convinced me, Minou. You’re a lucky woman, and he’s a lucky man.”

 

The next day, Minou offered to take him to see their sister. Although she’d assured him that Olympe was perfectly fine, January didn’t fully convince himself that his family was alive and unharmed until he had Olympe in his sights. A terror he hadn’t even realized he’d been feeling rushed out of him, replaced by a blissful relief.

“Ben!” Olympe grinned, and he felt the jut of her collarbones against his chest as she embraced him. “And you brought Minou—a regular family reunion.”

“It’s a shame I couldn’t drag our mother from Rue Burgundy.” A smile spread across his face as well. “She was thrilled to see me, of course.” January had hesitated to come with only his sister, and had let Minou accompany him alone only after her fervent assurance that she’d be perfectly capable of defending him should it come to that, but now he was glad of it. He’d forgotten what it felt like to have a family.

It had surprised him at first that Olympe and Minou got on so well (for he remembered all too well how their household had changed after Dominique’s birth), but that surprise seemed foolish now. They were similar underneath it all, and it was more obvious now with society’s pretenses stripped away.

 

“And you’ve been well?” Olympe looked tired, of course, but she didn’t seem to be missing any vital parts or nursing any troublesome injuries.

“As well as I can be. It ain’t always easy keeping the little ones away from the outside—” She cut off at the sight of January’s expression. “Oh, you didn’t know! You’ll meet my husband next, then, Paul Corbier. And the children, of course.”

“I leave for a few years, and when I return you’ve all married!”  January drew her into another hug, feeling the same easy sense of camaraderie they’d once shared for the first time since he’d left for Paris. “Children?”

She told him all about what he’d missed: the wedding, the first teeth and first words, the fevers, the fear as the world went to hell and the joy when her family had found their way through (sister and mother included).

All too soon, January remembered the questions he’d meant to ask Olympe. “I’d hoped you might be able to help me find someone.”

“You won’t believe what mess our brother has gotten himself into!” Minou leapt into the conversation instantly, although whether she knew the relief she’d brought him, January didn’t know. “The people he’s staying with took some man off the street, and he ran away in the morning and got himself killed. But he has wealthy relatives who planned on ransoming him, and now Ben’s been tasked with tracking down the killers or facing the charges himself. _One day_ in town, and he gets himself tied up in this nonsense!”

“And you want me to dig you out of the hole you thrown yourself in?” Olympe grinned. “The same Ben that left for Paris all those years ago.”

“You always knew your way around the city. You’re my best bet at finding out what happened to our victim.”

“Always picking up your messes,” Olympe sighed, elbowing him. “You’ll owe me, then. What’s the poor man’s name?”

Adrien had been on the wrong side of town when the dead had risen, Olympe told him, explaining how he’d been locked into the city in the first place. He spent most of his free time gambling (ever entrepreneurial, the businessmen of New Orleans had set up cardhouses in well-defended buildings, inviting customers to play for food or outside money), and seemed to have been living with a free black named Caleb near Rue St. Charles.

“In a tavern, La Dame Something-or-Other. I wish I could tell you more,” Olympe said.

“This is far more than I had yesterday.” He embraced her. “I’ve missed you.”

She looked up at his face, and January was certain she could see the hurt prickling away in his heart. “What brought you back?”

“The cholera took my wife.” It had begun to hurt a little less to say it out loud. “If I had to wake up in our room in an empty bed, and walk past her favorite bookstore and her favorite bakery and the corner where we first met one more time, I thought I might die.” He laughed a bit. “I didn’t expect the return home to plunge me into new dangers.”

“I’m glad to have you back.” Olympe took his hand. “And terrible sorry about your wife. If you need to talk…”

He embraced her. “I’ve missed you.”

 

January took his sister’s information back to his hosts, hoping that at least one of them had heard of this La Dame.

Recognition dawned on Hannibal’s face immediately. “La Belle Dame,” he said, before he fell silent.

“You’ve heard of it, then?” Rose asked.  “Might it have anything to do with Belanger?”

“Well, it certainly tells us a bit more about him.” Hannibal sighed, hesitating a moment before he continued speaking. “It’s meant for men of certain interests, to facilitate finding companions.”

“He could have met this Caleb there,” January added. “He’d seem to be our best chance of finding the truth.”

“I haven’t been there since the dead rose,” Hannibal said, and they all steadfastly pretended this wasn’t any sort of confession. “I could accompany you tomorrow, in case they’ve held to social strictures in the face of the endtimes.”

 

They needn’t have worried about getting into La Belle Dame—the door had been ripped off its hinges and replaced with a barricade of wooden crates, and a single head popped out from a shattered window to greet them.

“There’s no one here ‘cept me,” the man shouted, squinting through the sunlight at them.

“We might be looking for you,” January replied, being careful to mimic the man’s cane-field French. “You know a man, name of Adrien Belanger?”

“You seen the bastard?” He frowned at January’s silence. “Maybe you better come inside.”

“You’re Caleb?” January asked, once they were seated in a ramshackle parlor.

“Depends who’s asking.” His grin was strained. “You said you know Adrien?”

“He died a few nights ago.”

Caleb let out a short, harsh noise, something between a laugh and a sob. “Did the dead get him?”

“A far more human threat claimed his life, I’m afraid,” Hannibal said. “ _Omnia mors æquat_ , and death has never been the exclusive purvey of monsters. Did your friend have any enemies?”

Caleb leaned back against his chair, face torn between a frown and a vicious sort of smile. “Only everyone in town. He liked to gamble, see. How else can you get money for ransom in this godforsaken place?”

“His family seems willing to pay the ransom,” January said.

“For him. Adrien was set on getting me out too, and no cousin is going to pay extra for the slave their heir apparent’s been fucking—” He broke off, tears falling more freely. “I told him he should leave me. Ain’t that much worse here than it was before, anyway, and he was going to get himself killed with all of these cards and loans and bets.” Caleb shook his head. “And the damn fool did. He wasn’t cut out for this, anyways. That first night, he scraped his leg on a fence when we were running, and he dropped everything to tie it up with a kerchief. Anyone could tell you that getting caught by those chasing us is worse than getting blood on your clothes.”

“Do you know who he owed his debts to?” January found himself wondering how much more difficult this would have been without the hordes of the dead to loosen people’s tongues and topple social strata.

“The Bolet family, mostly—or what’s left of them. Used to be five brothers, but all but two died when the dead rose. I heard they kept one of those dead brothers around to set on men who don’t pay up, but I never saw him. Don’t know why they’d need a dead man on their side either, as it’s easy enough to get people to pay up when you’ve got two sets of fists and half an arsenal on your side.”

“You’ve never heard of them killing anyone before?” January hated to ask so bluntly, but Caleb seemed to understand the necessity of the question.

“No. Not direct like Adrien, anyway. They weren’t too careful with where they aimed their warning shots, but a dead man ain’t gonna pay you.”

“Thank you,” Hannibal said, offering him a worn but clean handkerchief. Caleb wiped his eyes with it, smiling faintly.

“I loved that idiot. Wouldn’t have said it before, but we’re all dying in this city. Did he get a proper burial?”

“They sent his ashes to his aunt,” January said. Caleb seemed to approve. “If you need anything, or you remember anything, you come find us, all right? We’ve got a house down by the docks, red boards on the attic window.”

“Will do.”

 

January’s sleep was restless that night, his dreams taking him back to the warehouse in which Belanger’s body had been found. Now, however, the walls were splattered with blood. It dripped down onto the floor, collecting into puddles that held far more blood than a man’s body could lose. Much of it seemed to come from his leg, where a bandage which might have been white at some point stopped only a pitiful portion of the flow. The rest dripped from Adrien’s nose, his mouth, his ears, leaving his face a red-streaked mess.

Something white fluttered down from the ceiling, and when he reached up to grab it, he recognized it as a medical paper, one he hadn’t seen since his first years in Paris, ripped from the pages of a journal. Before he could read it, another few pages fell from the ceiling, then a few more, until he was drowning in them.

He woke up gasping for air, with thoughts of the murder still spinning through his mind. He pulled Rose and Hannibal aside before breakfast to tell them his worries.

“Why would these men have killed Belanger? Surely they could have earned back his debts and more by selling him to his family.” And how the word had turned, he thought, that now it was white men who could be sold.

“Perhaps they were carried away by passion,” Rose said.

But Hannibal shook his head. “It’s bad practice to kill the men who owe you money. They would be well-practiced at scaring debtors without killing them.”

The same near-forgotten memory tugged at January’s mind. “And his cousin died in an accident with a horse?”

Rose nodded. “Have you thought of something?”

“I’ll need to talk to Inspector Shaw.”

 

As January prepared to leave, musket slung over his shoulder and Rose standing behind him with her hand on her saber’s hilt, a frantic knocking echoed through the room. He rushed to open the door, finding his sister outside with blood smeared down her bodice.

“Ben,” Minou gasped, “come outside.”

He glanced up at the sun, rapidly descending over the rooftop. Rose laid a hand on his arm (the most physical contact she’d made with him since they’d met, he realized with a start).

“Hannibal and I can take care of Shaw,” she said gently. “You should help your family.”

Minou led January to an alley next to the abandoned house he’d began to think of as home, where Artois was shivering on the ground with Henri and Chloe standing over him.

“You ought to check his arm,” Minou said to him. “I think…” She paused for breath, wiping away a stray tear. “I think he’s been bitten.

January cut her off with a gentle squeeze of her hand. “I’ll look him over.”

Henri moved to the side to allow January space next to his patient. The wound was on his right arm—clear teeth marks, with a gray-green putrefaction that he’d never seen under normal circumstances.

Chloe took Artois’s hand. “He’s as good as dead.”

It wasn’t a question, nor was it a plea for condolence. January put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry. If there were any justice in the world, he wouldn’t be lying here.”

“If there were any justice, they wouldn’t have trapped a city within these walls in the hopes that we’d eat each other alive.” Chloë sighed, and let the bitterness fade from her face. “Artois, are you comfortable?”

He grinned, looking more pallid every moment. “Does it matter? You’ll have to shoot me before the sun sets.” Seeing the flash of emotion in Chloë’s eyes, Artois gripped her hand tighter. “You’re going to shoot me. One of you has to. I can’t bear the thought of taking more of you into this with me.”

She nodded, wiping a tear away with the corner of her sleeve. January, who had been feeling more and more like he was intruding on an all-too-personal moment, stepped forward and offered his gun to the young woman.

“I’ve no objections to pulling the trigger,” he said, but Chloë shook her head.

She sat down next to Artois, pressing a kiss to his cheek. Then she began whispering to him—nearly unintelligible, and even if it hadn’t been, January wouldn’t have felt it right to eavesdrop on Chloë’s final conversation with her brother.

She put the barrel of the gun against his temple and, without hesitation, pulled the trigger. Then she dropped the gun, sat down on the ground, and began to sob.

Minou led Chloë inside while January and Henri took care of the body. To January’s surprise, Henri was a great help in this makeshift burial-by-fire, although he did look a little green in the face.  It felt wrong to leave Artois to burn alone, but the rapidly darkening streets and the strange rustling noises coming from nearby convinced January of the need to retreat inside.

 

When January reached the parlor after shrugging off his smoke-scented waistcoat, Chloë was curled against his sister’s side, Minou stroking her hair. Henri pulled another chair to Minou’s side and sat beside them, while January took the armchair near the door. He was too close to his own grief to attempt to comfort Chloë: he knew how hollow any words he could offer would sound.

It was a relief when the knock at the door came, although that relief faded somewhat when January saw the blood on Rose’s trousers and the shock on both her and Hannibal’s faces.

“It’s not mine,” Rose said when she caught January’s eyes tracing her pantleg. “There was an incident at the wall—Hannibal was gallant enough to defend me. We both escaped unscathed.”

Neither of them looked at ease, but January was unwilling to press them. He turned to Shaw, who gave a slow tilt of his head towards the staircase.

They convened in the library, each sharing what had happened earlier that night.

“An ill time to be out,” Shaw said, and January was inclined to agree. “Now, your friends say you have an idea of what mighta killed our heir?”

“I read a paper during my studies about a peculiar hemorrhagic tendency,” January said. “It runs in families, and seems to cause death by bleeding from even minor wounds. I don’t think Adrien was killed intentionally—he owed money to the wrong people, they decided to frighten him into paying it up, and the resulting beating caused internal bleeding exacerbated by Adrien’s condition.”

“You got any idea where the debts came from?”

“Nothing that would please his family,” January replied, and Shaw nodded grimly.

“I’ll tell ‘em what our surgeon came up with, then.” Shaw tipped his hat, and made for the door.

January wished he could feel some sense of accomplishment. He’d solved a murder, after all. But two people were dead, and the city he’d left behind seemed irrevocably destroyed. How could he live in a world where the dead walked the streets and young women were forced to kill their own brothers?

_The same way you lived in a world where men sold their half-brothers_. And in any case, there was no way to leave. Even if he could, he wasn’t sure he would want to. Of course he would have preferred to return to the city as he’d left it, but given the choice between dying a slow death of grief in Paris and risking his life to spend the rest of his days with family and friends in New Orleans, he was beginning to think that this was the better option by far. Those you loved could be taken from you at any time—at least New Orleans was honest about its dangers. And when he thought about his sisters, and his newfound friends, and even his mother, corpse-ridden streets seemed a pleasant alternative compared to a too-empty bedroom across the Atlantic. He could learn to live here, where life and love flourished among the dead.

**Author's Note:**

> [The first medical work on hemophilia](https://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Hay_1813_NEJM_2,29-33.pdf) was written by John Hay in 1813, so I figure Ben could feasibly have read about it during his time in medical school. 
> 
> Hannibal's quotes:  
>  _"The graves stood tenantless..."_ \- Hamlet  
>  _"Stone walls do not a prison make"_ \- "To Althea, from Prison", by Richard Lovelace  
>  _"Omnia mors æquat"_ \- Death levels all things, from Claudian.


End file.
